White Christmas

I have been inspired this past month to catch up on some reading, in this particular case on the vagaries of the stock market. I have spent my entire life pondering how risky it is. Yet, reading about the strategies and life of Warren Buffett (about the richest man in history) you wouldn’t think so.

In doing all this reading, I ran into a simple question that I have been thinking about ever since. It’s a cure for the over-optimism of a small business owner and applies equally to big business. We small guys like to think that when things are going well, it is so for ever. (We balance this by believing that when things are going badly, the future is dead.)

It’s a simple question, but I believe it defines business ownership. The question is: What am I doing right now that my competitors are not yet doing?

Business is very simple. Get as much input as you can, copy what works, discard what doesn’t. (This means that anything unique has a bad smell about it because it is unproven.) Anything that you are currently doing which the rest of the market hasn’t yet copied — will be copied. What will you do then?

It’s a wonderful question for the holidays — to consider while driving down the N3, and even more so going down the N2, especially that remote stretch of nothingness between Colesberg and Laingsberg. It is not a good question for the beach where every fluorescent blue Micro Bikini diverts one’s attention to things more important — at least for the moment. (Isn’t it amazing how expensive so little material can get?)

It is at times like these that every male South African outside of the country is desperately dreaming of a white Christmas – those endless kilometres of pristine South African beach, burning a South African sausage, burrowing his face into half a watermelon, and drinking far more beer than would be legal where he lives right now.

Right now I too am dreaming of a white Christmas to cover the grey sludge that has turned my silver bullet (the kids’ name for Dad’s car) to the half-black full stop. The local National Health System is so flummoxed by folk inconveniently falling ill at the onset of winter that the boy’s toothache is going to have to wait until January, 2008 – or until it becomes a crisis and develops into a meningeal abscess – at which point we can admit him to hospital.

And for a country that, I am told, is often wet, the roads lack a certain something, which we in the uncivilised South call drainage. I begin to understand the allure of the wide variety of LandRovers that so confused me on my arrival. These vehicles are not a fashion statement, they are a survival tool.

Of course, there is a certain frisson of excitement as one rounds the corner on a country road to suddenly find one’s car aquaplaning in seeming slow motion towards a startled horse and horrified rider (wearing regulation flourescent see-me-in-the-pitch-black-arctic-night plastic vest as a talisman against wild South African drivers) before fetching up against a submerged rock and sinking ankle deep into the puddle that has formed in the 10 minutes it took to fetch the boy from school.

And don’t get me started on this full bodied Aussie dry red wine which shows rich cassis and spicy plum flavours. It’s so cold outside that the spicy plum is more like a dried prune, and so damned hot inside that the cassis has headed south to Ibiza for a cheap holiday.

Bottom line, wherever you are this Christmas – it’s got good bits and bad bits, and a little time for reflection. Our businesses and our clients get the best of us for most of the year. But Christmas is a a time for family and friends – so have some fun, relax a tad, lose the suit, and give those pale haunches some sun – if you can.

And if you can’t, heck you’ll see me in the pub as well. I’ll be the oke in the Springbok jersey trying to find some biltong to line my stomach for this wallaby wine trying to pretend it can emulate that dusty velskoen flavour with strong mushroom mulch overtones so unique to wines grown slightly east of Stellenbosch. You know, as you drive in from Somerset West and pass through that dip with the slight mist that you think is a quaint fog but turns out to be South Africa’s own implementation of Saran gas?

Did I mention I was missing home? Have a good break, and we’ll talk early in January. Thanks for reading my rambling thoughts this past year.